The Siren Agenda
by scratchedlines
Summary: Angel Shepard is not the person she believed herself to be. Her life was reconstructed thirteen years ago without her knowledge, all to steer her down a path that will bring about her father's goals. Cover image done by Lukael@Tumblr
1. Prologue

They say you're supposed to want to emulate your parents, to take all of their best traits and multiply them through your own actions, to create a legacy that you can be proud of. In a way, it would memorialize everything that's boiled to this point, to _you_. But there are some paths that were not meant to be taken, no matter how much love you feel for your father. No matter how much you want to convince yourself that your mother is watching from some kind of... obscure afterlife and is filled with nothing but pride.

She wouldn't be proud of me leaving.

She wouldn't be proud of the murder I'd had to commit for _his_ benefit, to further his agenda. Not when I can see the madness that resides in his gaze when he speaks of the future.

She would feel nothing but contempt for what he had become. This... Illusive Man, he calls himself. But I only knew him as Jack, my father.

At least I did, until I died.


	2. Chapter 1: Nebula

I was never a big fan of hospitals. It wasn't only the putridly sterile smell that turned my stomach. The sounds alone of the sick and dying filling the hallways reminded me more of a grandiose torture chamber than a place that was designed to help people.

So when the blaring of alarms overhead begins, stirring me enough to fill my nostrils with that smell of too-much-bleach, it's understandable why panic is the first thing to grip me. I'm jolted upright, but something keeps me in place: leather restraints, warm against the cold slab of metal they're restraining me against. The confinement only serves to intensify my panic, metal buckles rattling against each other with each attempt to free myself. Weak as I am, I have no intention of staying here longer than I have to. ... wherever this place is.

The room is stark, save for a stool nearby. It looks like the most used thing in this room; where everything is pristine and white, the stool itself is worn and lopsided, one wheel desperately trying to reach for the floor and failing. There's also an insignia on the door, a white and yellow stylized H. Hospital? It could mean anything, given I've never seen that kind of symbol before. Closing my eyes, I try to recollect myself and rein down my panic. What I need to do right now is think, to make sense of the situation before me. The overhead alarms, however, are proving to make things quite difficult.

Thankfully, it stops as sudden as it started, though my ears continue to ring in the silence to make up for its absence. In all the noise, I missed the quiet wheeze of the door opening and closing, and a pair of footsteps nearing. All of my tension eases with the return to silence, brows unknotting themselves as I sink back to the hardened surface I'm on. There's an aching weariness in my limbs, like I'd piggybacked a krogan halfway across the galaxy. I had obviously been out a lot longer than just a simple nap.

"Ah, you're awake." A nervous blonde woman adjusts her large reflective glasses, hair combed back into the neatest of ponytails, and tinged with noticeable strands of white. Obviously a hard-working woman from the way she carries herself, her back rigid even as she takes a seat near my head on the noisy, rattling stool. It's easy to age her, given the minute lines that crease her brow and mouth, but given her tense disposition, her appearance is probably more a result of her occupation. That alone makes me more weary, for if she's nervous about being here, then...

"If you don't mind, I'm going to-"

"Where am I?" The words grate against the back of my tongue like sandpaper, and it forces me to swallow against the dryness. A fruitless endeavour, given that I have very little saliva to work with.

"Here..." Worn, tired hands manage to prop my head up as she offers me the glass of water, trying her best to look non-threatening with a half-smile of hers. She's avoiding my question, the water a mere distraction as she prolongs the inevitable. Those thick frames do well enough to hide her eyes, making it difficult to determine what her real intentions are, but the nervous twitch in her grin says enough. I don't know why I notice these things, _know_ these things, but it's proving to be beneficial so far.

"I said, where am I?" With my voice returned to me, I'm able to interject more authority behind my words, though I'm hardly in a position to be demanding anything. I can only bank on the timid disposition she carries to break her and give in to my demand. Thankfully, she obliges without much relentance.

"Lazurus Station. You've been... there was an accident. We've been keeping you stable here for your own good." There's a tremor in her voice that I can't ignore. She's hiding something... And this Lazurus Station? I've never heard of it. Which probably means it wasn't in any of the systems I've been in... before? When... when did I fly? Where have I...? I don't remember...

"You shouldn't... you suffered a serious blow to the head. It's natural that you would forget some things. It'll all come back in time, with a little practice. That's why I'm here. To help you remember the small things, so you can work your way up from there."

That seems to be a reasonable request. At least, that's what I believe it to be, having nothing else to work off of. I'm stuck in a place I don't recognize, with a woman I don't know, and a subsequent lack of memory. I honestly don't have much of a choice either way.

Reading the hesitation and wariness in my expression, she drags the rattling stool over, that single wheel spinning aimlessly.

"Let's start with the simple things first. Your name?" A datapad of flickering letters and numbers appears in her hand, the once-friendly smile becoming something more professional as she looks over her notes.

Names. Right. This is supposed to be one of the easy questions that you're not supposed to screw up, or else you're stuck in a hospital bed for the rest of your life.

"Angel." Saying it was like a gong sounding in my head, a moment of clarity and celebration that, yes, I hadn't completely lost my mind. The name, albeit strange, feels familiar. One step down. A few hundred more to go.

"Age?" I take her continuing as a sign that I must have gotten it write.

"Thir... ty?"

"Thirty-two, to be exact."

At least I wasn't that far off.

"Parents?"

I remember her being gone a lot. Always smelling of gun grease. Her hands were rough, and she wore...

"... mom was military. My dad was..."

Dad...? A face, a name, a voice, nothing comes to mind when I try to recall anything about him. Why can't I-?

"... died, before you were born. It's easy to confuse things if you don't remember him. But it's better you know than trying to fill in the blanks with false hopes and imagination." I can see her hand dancing over the screen as she jots down a few things.

Is that why I can't recall anything? Why I can't recall anything even remotely happy about his existence? Or even the bad ones? It's like... he never existed at all. I don't know if I should find that comforting or mourn a life I never got to know.

"Is this... a hospital. I saw the H on the door and thought... I mean, who brought me in here?" With the lull in the conversation, I figure it wouldn't hurt to ask a few questions of my own.

"Hyperion paid for your treatment. You had several lacerations, a few broken ribs..." As she continues to ramble, her words fall on deaf ears as my gaze trails towards the symbol on the door again.

... so that's what that H stood for. _Hyperion_.


End file.
